Green With Envy

You know how I have to have vacuum lines in my carpet? Yeah, well, apparently some people feel similarly about their lawns. Here is a picture of the guy across the street's lawn. The people next door to me have a lawn that looks almost identical, only their lines run horizontally. And the people who live across the street from them prefer the diagonal lawn lines. All Asian households, BTW. For some perplexing reason, my neighborhood is made up of an inordinate amount of Asians. I'm not complaining, I'm just noticing the pattern, that's all. And I'm talking about FOTB Asians at that. And apparently Asians take their lawns very, very seriously. I have seen them all on their hands and knees on a number of occasions hand picking weeds. I have also seen them all trimming the edges of their yards with scissors. I wish I was kidding, but alas, I'm not.
I've never been into my lawn. I try to have it cut on a regular basis so nobody calls the county on me, but that's about where the buck stops. I was happy to move into a new house with new sod that was lovely and thick and bright green. But that was a year ago. And since then my lawn has developed a little weed problem (and not the same weed problem I developed in college) it is 5 different shades of green, none of which being the deep emerald as the lawn across the street, and it is just otherwise unsightly. So in a case of keeping up with the Jones (or keeping up with the Changs as the case may be) I hired a lawn guy.
I already have a lawn guy that does the cutting and trimming, but this is a new fella that's supposed to through the delight of chemicals, make my lawn a lush, green landscape. Well, he came for the first time on Friday and left me a note on my door that said something to the effect of, "You need to reseed, aerate, thatch, de-weed, fertilize and treat your shrubs." So I'm thinking, yeah, well, that's why I hired you, Sunny boy, get to work. And then I realized he must be making a special effort to leave me this note because he's going to charge separately for all of these things, they must not be included in my monthly maintenance fee. (Which really, after that list, begs the question What is included?)
And then it occurred to me, why spend the extra money? I've got a couple of extra dogs I'd like to get rid of, why don't I just barter with Mr. Chang for a little lawncare?